Hey, you can't make an omelette without locking someone in solitary for two years without trial.
I wanted to find out how big the county was, so I googled and found this not-very-responsive response. But, checkers are available, so there's that.
... I hope the criminals responsible for his detention spend as much time or longer under the same conditions or worse.
I thought liberals didn't believe in eye-for-eye justice.
Yeah, and I thought conservatives didn't believe in the right to a fair trial. Oh, wait, they don't.
(assuming the allegations are roughly true)
Given that he was just awarded $22 million by a federal judge, it's probably safe to assume the allegations are roughly true.
Meanwhile, from the link:
After three days in a padded cell, jail guards transferred Slevin into solitary confinement without explanation.
"Their policy is to then just put them in solitary" if they appear to have mental health issues, Coyte told msnbc.com.
What a lovely policy.
"Well, when I see 5 weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the park in full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's *my* policy."
Well, clearly, it wouldn't be true eye-for-an-eye justice to inflict the same punishment as he had on everyone who was responsible for it. If five people were responsible for it, that would be 10 years in solitary confinement total, and 10 years for two isn't eye-for-an-eye. Remember, "an eye for an eye" was fair for its day - relatively merciful compared to policies in which injury would be punished with much greater retribution.
So let's say five people were significantly, directly responsible for it. You could say that in the grand scheme of things, hundreds of people are indirectly responsible for it in some way or other, maybe even including all the county citizens who voted for a hanging judge (not that this guy even saw a judge, but anyways). They set the policies, they were willing to weight law and order higher than justice and civil liberty, they condone police brutality. (I suppose that's technically jumping to conclusions. Fine, police malpractice.)
But that's impossible to determine. Who voted for the hanging judge because he was a hanging judge, rather than because he was the right party or because they liked his tie (although those reasons are hardly ideal either)? We can't read minds here. And besides, that's passing the buck. If everyone is guilty, then no one is.
Still, there obviously must be some people who are significantly more guilty than others. The arresting officer, maybe, or a prison warden who deliberately chose to not help this guy see a lawyer. Let's assume there are five people like that. Nice round number. Two divided by five is 4.8. So let's put each of those five people in a padded cell like that for four months, 24 days. Again, this is about justice rather than revenge, so they would get an hour of exercise or human contact per day, even though this guy didn't. I'm sure their families would understand, considering what they did.
However, you can't really subdivide the loss of a tooth. One from each of them does seem like the least unfair way to handle it.
There, Shearer, you've successfully trolled again.
5
Given that he was just awarded $22 million by a federal judge ...
According to the linked story:
The $22 million, awarded by a federal jury ... .
Jury not judge.
I smell another "drunken court-appointed lawyer slept through client's condemnation to death penalty" story here.
From the link in 2:
Since he was hired as the detention director in late 2005, Chris Barela has tackled the issue head-on by hiring staff, contracting for services and negotiated the elimination of the employee union from the medical wing to facilitate easier and more interactive and adaptive management of that sector of the facility.
During former Medical Director Daniel Zemek's tenure at the facility, he was recognized by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill for his contributions to addressing mental health issues within the facility.
In 2007, Barela contracted for services in the medical wing to a licensed third-party provider whose personnel were better-suited to treating the mentally-ill population of the facility.
I knew it! Those goddamn unions again...
I haven't updated on Custodian Grandma for awhile, because her updates have been straight-depressing, instead of unusually-horrifying-depressing, ie:
- daughter who had abusive boyfriend in Mexico went back to Mexico
- other daughter with the 7 kids got arrested for taking drugs across the border (I think?) and has been in jail for the last couple months because they can't afford bail to get her out,
...so CG and her son have been taking care of all the kids lately.
Now the updates get crazy again, though:
CG was out for a few days, so when she came back I asked if she was ok. She'd been in the hospital, with kidney failure.
I was horrified, and asked how she's feeling, etc. She said they gave her lots of fluids and a prescription for potassium. "What was the problem?" I asked.
"I got locked up, for the first time in my life!" she said. She'd been in jail for three days, for tickets. "My tickets caught up with me." She believes the kidney failure happened because she wouldn't drink the water in jail, but the more I asked, the less that seems like the cause. Anyway.
She's feeling better, and bail of the daughter with the 7 kids should be dropping low enough that they can bail her out with a signature. After only a few months sitting in jail.
I do wonder about the public defender in this case. Unless they were not told he was there, they seem incompetent or worse.
12: What makes you think he had an attorney at all?
12: obviously the article is short on detail, but I wasn't under the impression this had progressed to the stage of having a lawyer appointed. I think they just basically kidnapped the guy and held him in a pen.
If I'm wrong about that, then yeah, the lawyer has some real explaining to do.
7
... prison warden who deliberately chose to not help this guy see a lawyer. ...
According to the response linked in 2 the guy had a court appointed defense attorney.
I don't know what happened but a possible scenario is the defense attorney thought the guy was obviously guilty and obviously crazy and that he would be better off where he was than where he would be after trial and conviction. So trial could wait until he could make a deal for time served. Maybe a bad calculation but not obviously criminal.
The county's apologia, linked above, refers to a lawyer of some description. It also makes much of the fact he "refused" to be put in an ordinary cell coming out of the padded cell but somehow doesn't make any attempt to explain the whole habeus corpus thing or even mention it.
Slevin was in the facility for 22 months. No one on the Doña Ana County Detention Center management team had any authority to release him without a judge's orders. His length of stay in the facility was entirely in the hands of the Third Judicial District Attorney's Office, his court-ordered defense attorney and the Third Judicial District Court.
Answer to my question in 14. From link in 2.
And really, has Mr. Slevin here been well served? $22 million is obviously a lot of money, but the county is going to appeal so he probably won't get it for years yet, the county might even be driven to bankruptcy (I don't know about New Mexico, but in Vermont, county government is a relatively small and weak layer between town and state) and if so he might get nothing, his lawyer will get a big chunk, and it won't just make him forget two years of hell.
In addition to guiding the punishment of the law enforcement here, the "an eye for an eye" principle might be useful for how to handle Slevin as well. Two years in solitary unjustly, so he should get two years of being treated like a prince by the county or state. Living in comfort and freedom, getting everything he needs for proper rehabilitation, multiple therapists as appropriate, and the best medical care possible after what he went through. Sounds like he needs it. Make sure that the local authorities know him well so he doesn't need to fear this kind of thing happens again. Money for the lost wages while he was in prison, with interest. And, when he's ready, a good program for reintegration into society, like help finding work and a place to live.
And you know what? All that would still cost a hell of a lot less than $22 million. However, it sounds too squishy and liberal, so no one would go for it.
14: That's why I said, "Unless they were not told he was there..."
7
There, Shearer, you've successfully trolled again.
I just don't understand the prisoner abuse is terrible so let's have some more of it viewpoint of the post. Is the objection solely that the maltreatment was pre-conviction?
18: That really doesn't answer much. I'd think if the jail had a leg to stand on, they'd say somethng like, "he refused to meet his court-appointed attorney" or "we made such and such efforts to help him seek legal representation."
I know there are plenty of really bad lawyers, but thinking like James listed in 16 is far worse than a 'bad calculation.' Unless the DA loses your file or the jail forgets you are there, you need a defense attorney actively trying to delay a trial that long. If a defense attorney was involved to delay trial and didn't do anything else, that would be a big omission.
21: I will, in fact, cop to having been flippantly vindictive in the post. I do not support anyone being in solitary (mostly called 'administrative segregation' these days) for more than a very short time, including the perpetrators responsible for what happened to to this guy. But I do think someone should be prosecuted.
22.2: also, how could the defence attorney think "two years in solitary is better than what this guy would get if I took it to trial"? He'd been arrested for DUI. There's no way he could get more than 90 days for a first offence.
23 At Rikers (informally, obvs) they call it "the bing"--supposedly for the sound the door makes as it's closing behind you. The first few times I heard this, I couldn't help but think of The Sopranos.
Yeah -- this isn't a story about institutional reform, or how it's a terrible shame that the system allows this sort of thing to happen. This is either one or more significant individual wrongdoers, or a truly freakish (as in, presumptively unbelievable) series of administrative errors.
24: Yes. There's no way this was deliberate on the part of anyone who wasn't being intentionally cruel.
At Rikers (informally, obvs) they call it "the bing"--supposedly for the sound the door makes as it's closing behind you.
I suspect it may actually be a Scots or Irish term meaning rubbish heap. A coal bing is the heap of spoil (non-coal rock) taken out of a coal mine.
28: Not every arrestee in New York was Irish, even back in the day.
28: Huh. You wouldn't have to go too far back before cops and prison guards were heavily Irish -- that's started fading with the Baby Boomers, but in my parents' generation it was still a valid stereotype. If the usage is that old, it's not impossible.
It's in cases like this that the penalty of Ostracism recommends itself: the culprits to be banished from the territories of, in this instance, the United States for a period of 10 years and deprived of the privileges of citizenship for the same period.
After which they can come home and start over (if they can afford the fare).
Not every arrestee in New York was Irish, even back in the day.
But all the policemen were, surely. Or is Hollywood lying to me?
Not more than a plurality, probably. But a lot.
Smearcase said "door closing behind you" so I was thinking of prisoner, not jailer.
Not enough details
If there were a jury trial and jury award, then surely there was some kind of defense by the county? I am not saying it wouldn't be worthless, but I am interested in what the county attorneys said in court.
Could they have just said "no comment" in effect in court, and hope the appeals process drags it out forever? But then what is the basis for appeal?
God only know what Scalia and Alito would do here. All the public defender's fault, which it probably is. One was appointed, what more do you expect the county to do? Etc
24: Oh, you'd need to go back another couple of decades for the bulk of the prisoners to be Irish.
I mean what do you expect prosecutors and judges to do, walk through the cellblock looking for prisoners who have not been adequately represented?
Just playing devil's advocate, or looking for a county defense, or thinking like Alito
37: You expect them to schedule a timely bail hearing and trial, even if he's not represented at all. Standard procedure isn't "lock them up until someone asks where they are", it should get them in front of a judge fairly briskly.
Actually, having finally gotten around to reading the defense in 2, it looks like my 15 was completely wrong. It's possible this was just a systemic failure of the sort inherent in our prison system nationwide.
Although, the fact that a jury looked (presumably much more deeply) at the facts and awarded $22 million in compensation, cuts the other way.
So, it's hard to say.
39: The statement is pretty thin on anything relating to Slevin's treatment particularly -- whether he ever met 'his' lawyer, whether he was able to communicate with anyone outside the prison, and so on.
But, they're saying they treated him well. Not: "We're horrified to learn about this travesty and are working to correct it", which is what you'd expect them to say, if they'd really done something unusually wrong. Otherwise, they look like assholes.
41 to 40. It's true that everythign we have is thin on detail.
They do indeed look like assholes.
There are a couple of overlapping horrors here: first, why he didn't get a bail hearing/trial, and the defense doesn't speak to that at all. Second, the 22 months of solitary, which is not unusual for prisoners with any sort of mental disorder or disability, but should IMO be properly considered torture.
The "we gave him the option to be put in general population but he refused, so we had no choice but to keep him in solitary" line is weird, but I bet (based on the jury verdict) if it's unpacked it doesn't amount to a defense.
Second, the 22 months of solitary, which is not unusual for prisoners with any sort of mental disorder or disability, but should IMO be properly considered torture.
Well, I agree, but that's what I meant by "a systemic failure of the sort inherent in our prison system nationwide." Put me on a jury and anyone who's ever been so much as threatened with solitary will be a millionaire. But I think that's an outlier position.
Right, but that systemic failure doesn't address what he was doing in jail at all for that long. What happened to the bail hearing, and the trial?
Given the paucity of detail, I think your view on this basically comes down to which of two scenarios you find most plausible: (a) a runaway jury awarding outlandish damages to a prisoner who suffered little if any actual wrongdoing, but who ended up with bad results as a consequence of his own medical and mental health issues, or (b) a county jail treating a mentally ill prisoner quite badly, and being unapologetic and defensive about it.
What happened to the bail hearing, and the trial?
Didn't they say his lawyer didn't get around to it?
I don't think so. I think the size of the verdict comes from the solitary confinement with the horrific mental and physical health effects. But the fact of the verdict comes from the irrationally extended pretrial confinement without bail on very minor charges.
I don't understand criminal procedure very well, so 47 may be nonresponsive in some way I don't realize.
"Bing" meaning a confinement cell, likely either from Scandinavian word meaning "storage room" (probably linked to the Scottish word meaning "heap") or Romani "bengipen", roughly meaning "hell".
His lawyer isn't responsible for initiating and scheduling the prosecution, the prosecution and the courts are. All the defense says is:
His length of stay in the facility was entirely in the hands of the Third Judicial District Attorney's Office, his court-ordered defense attorney and the Third Judicial District Court.
Which is right on some level -- the primary malefactor here probably has to be the prosecutor. The jail couldn't have let him go without permission. But someone at the jail should have been responsible for checking in with the prosecution when his stay was bizarrely extended.
They said, "His length of stay in the facility was entirely in the hands of the Third Judicial District Attorney's Office, his court-ordered defense attorney and the Third Judicial District Court."
Given that there is absolutely no detail on any of these other actors, I'm assuming this is trying to imply somebody else forgot to do something when in fact the jail made a huge error or deliberately fucked the guy.
49: We're overlapping each other, and I don't know anything about NM criminal procedure, and not much about NY. But nowhere is the state allowed to imprison you without some ongoing legal proceeding, or a completed legal proceeding authorizing the detention. That legal proceeding is initiated by the state, and the state is responsible for scheduling it in a timely fashion.
Now, a good lawyer who knew about the case would almost certainly have rattled the right cages to get him out faster, but even if he had no representation at all, the state's responsible for keeping the wheels turning.
Well, in any common law jurisdiction, you've got to either bail the guy, or bring him in front of a court and produce prima facie evidence, which can either bail him or remand him in custody, or in some cases (like the Terrorism Act in the UK) you can apply to the court for more time to question him before bringing charges.
You do have custody time limitations in the US?
52: Oh, someone running the jail could deliberately have fucked the guy over, I suppose. I'd have to know the details of procedure to know where malice or an error was possible or likely between the prosecutor and the jail.
55: Yes, but like everything else, the details are state-by-state. But this is well outside anything that could possibly be permissible.
50: hmm. Interesting. Whence also, maybe, "banged up".
Collins has coal bing coming from the Norse "bingr" meaning heap. So the sense of waste or rubbish was secondary.
Maybe the Riker's Island bing was originally the bin? As in, waste bin?
If it is the prosecutors fault, which does seem most likely outside of the jailer, why wouldn't the jail people mention something specific, like he was arraigned or denied bail or had a hearing?
It does happen that people slip through the cracks, of course. For example, this local man got held without trial until a judge ordered him released. But he had a reason to keep quiet (rape is very serious), had at hearing, and had a lawyer. I cannot see any evidence that of these apply in the NM case, which is why I would not rule out actual malice.
||
There is a person walking around my office in a Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform.
Does this count as wearing a uniform for Charles Murray's quiz?
|>
Maybe the Riker's Island bing was originally the bin? As in, waste bin?
I think "bin" does come from the same root as "bing" meaning "storage room or heap" so this is likely too. There is a tendency among compilers of slang dictionaries to assume that anything otherwise incomprehensible is derived from the nearest phonetically similar Gypsy word.
60: What trial was it that had "the Commander" as a juror?
59: He never got a trial, and says he never saw a judge. The prosecutor is responsible for getting him in front of a judge, first for a bail hearing and then for trial, and I assume someone at the jail must be responsible for checking in with the prosecution when things aren't happening on a normal schedule.
I think "bin" does come from the same root as "bing" meaning "storage room or heap" so this is likely too.
Actually Collins has it from OE "binne" meaning a basket.
63: are you sure the prosecutor was even aware of his presence at the jail?
Nope, not sure. I suppose the arresting cop could have bunged him in ("bung"? related?) and no one ever reported his incarceration to a prosecutor. If true, the cop and the jail administrator should both be convicted of kidnapping, or some equivalent.
So why was Slevin at the facility for 22 months without a trial? Williams explained, "The fact is that the Third Judicial District Attorney's office, his defense lawyers or the courts could have made the decision to get him out. We didn't have that ability."
District Attorney Amy Orlando told ABC-7 the legal process is different for inmates who may be mentally ill than those who are not.
"Twenty-two months (in a detention center) for someone who has possible mental health issues is not unreasonable at all because we can't just say, 'Go back out on the streets.' They need treatment, they need help," said Orlando.
The district attorney's office provided ABC-7 a timeline documenting all the hearings involving Slevin. The documents show he was taken to a mental health facility in Las Vegas, N.M. and underwent competency and "dangerousness" evaluations.
In June of 2007 a judge decided to dismiss the charges against him and have him civilly committed instead.
"No one is accusing (the DA's office) of taking too long or delaying this case. The process was handled appropriately," said Orlando. "The issue at trial was how was he treated during that process."
Yes, the Etymological Dictionary specifically warns that they're distinct but often confused, sorry. Although it also has an Anglo-Saxon "binn", meaning manger. You can sort of see the connections between all the senses. Here's my source for the Romani hell theory.
67: That doesn't make any sense. He may have been crazy enough to be involuntarily civilly committed, but there's no sane reason why that process would keep him in jail without trial, particularly for 22 months. Why wouldn't his prosecution proceed on schedule while the civil commitment process happened in parallel?
Maybe the Riker's Island bing was originally the bin? As in, waste bin?
Sure, why not. There are certainly dialects in New York that don't wholly distinguish between /n/ and /ŋ/.
There's absolutely no reason for a sentence such as "The district attorney's office provided ABC-7 a timeline documenting all the hearings involving Slevin" to ever appear in a news article posted on the internet without a hyperlink or a sidebar or something somewhere setting out the details of that timeline. Infuriating.
My introduction to Old Norse doesn't list 'bingr' in the glossary/dictionary, but it is quite small.
It does, under the entry for 'bin' list 'unda by', though. Which translates as 'wound-bees', i.e. arrows. Which is excellent.
This appears to be, roughly, the timeline:
Stephen Slevin, 57, of Las Cruces was jailed on charges of driving while intoxicated, transferring a stolen vehicle and other crimes on Aug. 24, 2005....
Coyte said that by May 8, 2007, when Slevin was transferred to the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, N.M., he had lost a third of his body weight, had a beard reaching to his chest, "toenails curling around his toes," fungus on his skin, bed sores and "had been driven mad."
Slevin's condition improved during his two weeks at the Las Vegas hospital, but he was returned to solitary confinement at the Doña Ana County jail, where his conditioned worsened, Coyte said.
Coyte said all charges against Slevin eventually were dismissed because his mental condition reached the point where he could not participate in his defense. Slevin was freed on June 25, 2007.
That doesn't sound like a properly functioning legal process, though. That sounds like on May 8, 2007, the jail decided he was in too bad shape to stay in solitary, and sent him to the mental hospital. Then they sent him back to solitary after two weeks, and freed him at the end of June. Nothing says he actually was involuntarily civilly committed (maybe he was, but I don't see that claim).
Has anyone blamed Teo yet? If not, I blame Teo. If so, how dare this person blame Teo? I'm outraged and stand ready to rise to his defense!
My guess for why the prosecution wouldn't go forward pending the civil commitment process is that he was (whether formally or otherwise) considered not competent to stand trial.
I had some professional contact with a case where a guy was in that limbo for 18 years. Very likely a bad dude, but still: 18 years, with no trial, under a series of what were supposed to be short-term civil commitments.
None of this is to defend whatever happened to Slevin, of course. Just that that may be the background.
Still, that's different. Your guy was civilly committed (over and over again) because some tribunal looked at him repeatedly and repeatedly thought he was a danger to himself or others (or whatever the standard is). And presumably he was in a mental hospital getting care, not in a jail awaiting trial.
Huh, I had assumed that "bing" at Rikers was actually some weird acronym, on the model of "MHAUII" (pronounced like the Hawaiian island; stands for Mental Health Assessment Unit for Infracted Inmates, basically solitary for seriously mentally ill prisoners and very close to a literal hell on earth).
The Medicare Fraud Control Unit located not many floors from where I sit now is pronounced MoFuCU (I haven't seen the acronym spelled and can't really make it work), which sounds like something you wouldn't say unless you wanted to start a fight.
And presumably he was in a mental hospital getting care, not in a jail awaiting trial.
Ha. He wasn't awaiting trial, I grant you that--by the time I got involved the charges against him had been dropped, because he'd already been locked up for longer than he would've served if convicted--but he was most certainly in a jail and just about always in solitary.
81: Jesus fuck. Was there some kind of legal finding that they can't do that? How can you keep someone in jail on the basis of a civil finding of mental illness?
67 does indicate the DA knew he was there. That hadn't been in earlier reports.
Seriously, though, I don't know anything about the details of this case beyond what's been discussed in this thread, but I do have some background knowledge of the area that may or may not be relevant. Doña Ana County is the second-largest county in the state (population ~200K) and contains its second-largest city, Las Cruces. This is not some rural backwater, and $22 million won't bankrupt the county government. Furthermore, the DA for the third district at the time this happened was none other than Susana Martinez, who is now the governor. It's not clear if she personally had anything to do with what happened to Slevin, but it seems odd that she doesn't seem to have been mentioned in any of the news coverage.
She comes from a hard-working, middle class family, so obviously the problem is elsewhere.
Osgood has horrified me -- if keeping an, not sure what to call them, arrestee in jail as the result of indefinitely repeated civil commitments is kosher, which I would not have thought it was but I don't know much about the subject, than possibly the length of pretrial commitment is a systematic problem rather than the result of individual wrongdoing. It's possible that whatever the civil commitment process in NM is was followed, although if he never saw a judge, either it wasn't followed or it is horribly fucked up.
If that's the case, though, this verdict should be applicable to any inmate suffering the effects of prolonged solitary confinement -- if the legality of the imprisonment isn't an issue, then we're looking at 22 million for a legally confined prisoner in inhumane conditions. You could probably find thousands of convicts that badly injured by solitary in any state you like.
(When I say 'applicable', I mean any department of corrections looking at a claim from a prisoner would be looking at this case as a comparison for settlement purposed.)
I thought that if someone was held in jail before trial because they were not competent to stand trial, you had to provide treatment.
I'm forcefully reminded of the late lamented Soviet Union, where it was common practice to incarcerate inconvenient people sine die on grounds of psychological issues.
90: Well, in theory you have to provide treatment for mentally ill prisoners in general. In practice, it tends to be ten minutes with a shrink every couple of months and someone throwing pills at you. And if you're mentally ill, you tend to violate prison/jail rules, which are absolutely necessary for safe functioning of the facility, so you have to be punished for that. Which is how you end up spending years in solitary.
re: 91
Yes. I read a bunch* of translated papers by Soviet psychologists as part of my thesis research. They are quite interesting as there's some not-obviously-wrong reasoning in them when it comes to defining certain types of behaviour as illness.
* that makes it sound like a did some heroic archive-digging, but there was a collection of papers translated and gathered together for some symposium or other.
92: For those who can't stand trial, I'd think that treatment would involve removal to a mental hospital if the meds didn't work. At least, the last time I was involved, there were a fair number of people in the state hospital who were incompetent to stand trial.
Sorry to drop out for a while. This was a no-good very-bad situation arising out of the fact that this guy was in the Federal system, which wasn't at the time and to a lesser extent still isn't set up for long-term civil commitment. There was also fig-leaf treatment, but it was provided at a federal detention center and was not different in any meaningful way from incarceration (in fact, most of the people there are inmates), and served mostly to provide documentation that the guy was still dangerous.
The trouble was that the statutes provided for the federal prosecutor to take all reasonable efforts to effect a transfer into the custody of the state department of mental health, but this particular AUSA was of the personal view that this guy could not be let out, ever, under any circumstances. As such, the "all reasonable efforts" amounted to an annual exchange of letters that could be summarized as "so, would you like to take him now?" "No thanks!"
It wasn't supposed to be that way.
We now have a federal statute, the Adam Walsh Act, about which I know not very much beyond the fact that it authorizes indefinite federal civil commitment for sexual predators. I have serious questions about the constitutionality of such a thing, but there it is on the books, with state-law analogs in most states since about 1999 when the Supreme Court said it was okay.
Okay, I don't know who I'm going to alienate by putting on my tendentious radical hat today, but here goes:
1. This civil commitment stuff is still an open issue, isn't it? At least here in MN, there's a set of sex offenders who are in some kind of limbo, given contradictory court rulings. Most of them wind up in the hospital-prison, and I'm not sure if any have successfully gotten released.
2. If you think this Slevin case is bad, consider that environmental activist Daniel McGowan has been in a "Communication Management Unit", with a bunch of Muslims, for several years now. CMU status means that not only can he not send out letters, but he is often refused incoming mail that is not deleterious in any way. 7 year sentence for some arsons in which no one was harmed.
More about Daniel:
http://www.supportdaniel.org/
3. CeCe McDonald, the young African-American transgendered woman who was arrested for 2nd degree murder after she and her friends were physically attacked by a group of white racists, has been in and out of solitary during her confinement. Apparently it is SOP for the Mpls. jail to stick all transgender people in solitary "for their safety" regardless of whether they feel threatened or have had any discipline problems.
More about CeCe: http://supportcece.wordpress.com/
7 year sentence for some arsons in which no one was harmed.
While I've got the same concerns for this guy's treatment as for any prisoner, 'arson' really shuts down my sympathy about his being in prison, unless you mean something like a bonfire in an inappropriate place.
97: Yes, but that's because you're a liberal sellout.
This civil commitment stuff is still an open issue, isn't it?
Could be in some places, I haven't done a 50-state survey. Here in MA, there is definitely a statute providing for indefinite civil commitment, and it has definitely survived facial constitutional challenges. My understanding is that after Kansas v. Hendricks came down (I guess it was 1997, not 1999; '99 is when the MA statute was enacted), most states adopted laws following the form blessed in that opinion.
It was Earth Liberation Front activity against big developers. Frankly, I'm not totally in support of that type of action at this particular juncture, although I do sympathize with the aims and the desire to do more than ineffectually protest. Look what happens when you engage in civil disobedience: The cops beat you up and torture you with pepper spray. Not much point to linking arms and singing Kumbaya then, is there?
And 7 years is a ridiculous sentence. How many people who've raped or killed someone get less than 7 years? Hell, that fucking psychopath Marine who had a hand in the murder of TWENTY-FOUR HUMAN BEINGS is walking free.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for anyone who calls for more imprisonment.
100: It hasn't been in the news here much for a couple of years, so perhaps things have been settled, but there were certainly ongoing challenges as of just a few years ago.
100: You know, I'm not as a matter of principle horrified by indefinite civil commitment if someone keeps on determining "Yep, still too dangerous to release." But it should be under humane conditions and accompanied by real medical treatment -- something called 'civil commitment' that means 'in prison forever' is horrifying.
Of course, even when a case is pretty high-profile, that doesn't mean you don't sometimes get 1.5 years of pre-trial solitary confinement. (And yes, I recognize that his being in the military makes it totally different as far as legally guaranteed due-process rights go; I'm talking about the apparent political acceptability of barbarism.)
103: There are a fair number of people who can't really be treated and can't be released. Brain injuries are scary and cause most of these issues.
I don't think there's broad understanding or acceptance of how bad solitary confinement is -- it really does drive people out of their minds, and should be recognized as torture.
103: I might be able to get behind that position in some theoretical world, but the state supreme court has recognized, and I quote, that civil commitment is "the functional equivalent of incarceration," which is somehow deemed "non-punitive" as it must be because you get "committed" instead of "convicted" on the basis of a civil finding that you're likely to offend as opposed to finding beyond a reasonable doubt that you actually did.
I exaggerate slightly: you can't be committed (here, at least) as an SDP unless you're presently serving a sentence for a designated sex crime. So you do have to be found guilty of a relevant offense before you can be committed. And there are procedural safeguards in place, where every year you can petition for a finding of non-dangerousness, and so forth. But still: "the functional equivalent of incarceration," for a term of one day to the rest of your life, for committing no new crimes. It does not sit well with me.
105: But they can at least be treated decently -- if treatment's not possible, and punishment is inappropriate because they're not imprisoned as a result of conviction for a crime, there's no reason for their confinement to be any more unpleasant than is necessary to incapacitate them.
106: that baffles me too. Don't all the people coming out of solitary totally insane make this fact clear? Or is the theory that they were crazy before they got put in the hole?
103: indefinite civil commitment if someone keeps on determining "Yep, still too dangerous to release."
But that's not "indefinite". If there are regularly scheduled hearings where the individual is allowed counsel and other trappings of a fair trial, then it doesn't seem completely unreasonable. What the nutters on the other side want to see is essentially locking up people and throwing away the key, without any semblance of due process, based on the belief that they will reoffend.
There was also fig-leaf treatment, but it was provided at a federal detention center and was not different in any meaningful way from incarceration (in fact, most of the people there are inmates), and served mostly to provide documentation that the guy was still dangerous.
I seem to recall that the German Federal Constitutional Court recently announced a decision that basically said "put up or shut up" with respect to this sort of thing: if you say the guy is too sick to release, you need to genuinely be giving him treatment. I haven't followed the aftermath of that decision (they gave the government a few months to sort things out), and I'm too lazy to try looking things up now; maybe it didn't amount to much as far as on-the-ground realities go. Still, my sense is that the FCC is quite willing to aggressively oversee administrative action in a way reminiscent of those US Federal judges back in the 60s-70s who fixed some of the awfulness of Southern prison systems.
Of course, all that was before we as a society decided mass incarceration was the way to go. I really have no hope that this stuff will get better--you can see from the way the department defends itself that their basic position is, "look, he was a bad guy (his criminal record was twenty-seven pages long!); you don't really care what we did to somebody like him, do you?" To which our society has already answered, decisively and repeatedly, no, we don't care.
I'm thinking of a different type of issue that LB and Osgood, I think. I'd left the field before the sex offender warehousing started.
111.last: Well, a New Mexico jury cares. So that's something. I shouldn't be researching this at work (I know I'm commenting all day, but that somehow works better interstitially), but I may look up any papers filed in the case to see if I can figure out what the story was.
God the articles have been awful on this. Just calling it a DWI loses some context. The crazy dude in a stolen car factors are kind of relevant here.
how bad solitary confinement is -- it really does drive people out of their minds, and should be recognized as torture.
The problem is that a lot of county facilities probably aren't equipped for crazy people. They're likely faced with a choice of the guy getting beat or killed by other inmates or locking him up by himself.
A county of 200,000 people shouldn't be unequipped for such.
114: I'll have to find where I read it, but the car wasn't stolen -- it was borrowed from a friend. I'd also doubt that he was all that floridly insane before they put him in solitary for an extended period.
Ditto to 115.
114: If that the case, isn't it possible to have someone transferred to a state facility in the interim?
"He was driving through New Mexico and arrested for a DWI, and he allegedly was in a stolen vehicle. Well, it was a car he had borrowed from a friend; a friend had given him a car to drive across the country," Coyte said.
Now, that's his lawyer, but it is after litigation, and the state never tried him for anything. So, probably not a stolen car.
I'll have to find where I read it, but the car wasn't stolen -- it was borrowed from a friend.
Try the link in the OP.
110: But that's not "indefinite". If there are regularly scheduled hearings where the individual is allowed counsel and other trappings of a fair trial, then it doesn't seem completely unreasonable. What the nutters on the other side want to see is essentially locking up people and throwing away the key, without any semblance of due process, based on the belief that they will reoffend.
Well, all Hendricks-style regimes have those kind of procedural rights built in. I'm sure there are people advocating for more draconian measures, but that's not what the Court has allowed.
How fair the trial is, and how much of a burden is on the detainee to prove his non-dangerousness, and the sufficiency of the treatment he's receiving in the meanwhile, are all open questions.
The problem is that a lot of county facilities probably aren't equipped for crazy people.
This is understandable; what is not understandable is why county authorities hadn't made contingency arrangements with somebody else to take care of people they didn't have appropriate facilities for. Was there no management?
the state never tried him for anything. So, probably not a stolen car
To be fair, the state never tried him because he was ruled incompetent to stand trial, not because they decided he hadn't done anything wrong.
Heh, "borrowed". I take a lot of stolen car reports where the "friend" isn't a friend but someone they met at a party, friend of an acquaintance, etc. and the "friend" calls the cops because the driver absolutely is not supposed to have their car. Or maybe they give them the keys to make a beer run or something at a get together and three days pass and crazy dude and their car is nowhere to be seen.
Ha, the owner's called in and had the car listed on NCIC as stolen. His story is that the guy gave him the car to drive across the country in. I'm guessing there were some mental issues prior to the solitary.
To be fair, the state never tried him because he was ruled incompetent to stand trial,
I hate the reporting on this -- this is probably the case, but none of the articles I read actually quite say "He was civilly committed at a hearing on [date] or he was ruled incompetent to stand trial on [date]." It's really unclear what process took place that triggered his being let out.
Ha, the owner's called in and had the car listed on NCIC as stolen.
Is this from an article, or do you know it through mystic professional powers?
(By which I meant access to some kind of database.)
And absolutely there should be processes and resources for mentally ill people who commit crimes. But this country in general falls very short on this stuff.
128: I get that many places fall short, but this seems way off the scale of fucking up.
125: Doesn't my blockquote in 74 answer this?
because his mental condition reached the point where he could not participate in his defense.
It doesn't really say how that determination was made -- through some legal procedure, or ad hoc by the DA's office?
131: Maybe the fungus on his skin spelled out "M'Naghten".
But this country in general falls very short on this stuff.
This is so true that the verdict now surprises me (I think it's great, but I'm surprised). It is completely conventional to torture mentally ill prisoners like this. When I read the story, I thought the verdict was for spending two years torturing someone who really shouldn't have been imprisoned at all. If they've got a leg to stand on in terms of having kept him locked up for two years, and we're just talking about inhumane treatment of a prisoner, this is an awful story but it's nothing unusual.
(By which I meant access to some kind of database.)
Stolen cars are put in NCIC and the software you run plates on automatically queries NCIC. The stolen car hit comes back with the originating agency, case number, etc.
I don't know for sure if it had already been listed but possession of a stolen car is a felony and we don't charge it on a guess. Generally the two ways are because the car's already listed on NCIC or we call the owner to find out if the guy driving the car is supposed to have it and their response is that the guy stole the car and that they want to press charges.
possession of a stolen car is a felony and we don't charge it on a guess
I think this is a case where assuming competent policing isn't safe.
Christ, gswift, did you start taking a regular regimen of gullibility pills when you became a cop?
I in fact was once almost arrested for stealing a car because the dumb-ass cop kept fucking up entering my information into the computer. I was driving in Charley's great state in the snow when I skidded off the road. I flagged down a cop for help. He chatted with me for a minute, went back to his car to type something on the computer, and then came back and then tried to convince me to admit that I stole the car. I just said over and over that it was my car and that he must have made a mistake with the computer. Eventually he tried his computer again. Then he called a tow truck for me and drove off.
FFS Walt, his defense lawyer's story is that he was depressed and wanted to leave the state and his friend conveniently gave him a car to drive across the country in. I'm pretty sure I'm not the gullible one here.
Also, from what I understand from the articles, this guy had a history of depression before his arrest, not anything more extreme (not that depression can't screw you up, but we're not talking someone with a condition leading to psychosis). He was extremely mentally ill after the treatment he got -- it's unclear that he was particularly ill beforehand.
138: It's not impossible that the car was stolen. But (a) this is a case where there were a bunch of fuckups -- postulating that he was initially overcharged isn't all that unlikely. Doesn't even have to have been a screwup by the arresting cop -- he could have had good reason to think the car was stolen enough to arrest slevin, that never got figured out because no one did anything. (B) I'm going by the reporting here. But everyone's reporting it primarily as a DWI arrest rather than a stolen car arrest. And there's been a trial on the lawsuit, which is likely to have brought out the basis for the arrest -- wouldn't you think that what came out was that the DWI was true, and the stolen car wasn't?
Also, of course, it doesn't matter if he stole the car. He still shouldn't have been in solitary for two years without a trial.
Unless he stole my car, in which case maybe.
Stolen car charges end up getting dropped all the time because the owner's interest in the case often stops the moment they get the car back.
My crazy lady who tried to cure her daughter of lesbianism with a bat was in a car from ID that was listed as stolen on NCIC. Oh, and the owner even left a message on her facebook page of "bitch you stole my car". We charged her at booking but that charge was dropped because the owner had no interest in actually testifying.
And I'm not defending the jail here. But I'm interested in what the actual problem is and I suspect it was that they don't have the facilities, funding, procedures, etc. to deal with a mentally ill subject in jail on a felony charge.
"Held for two years without trial for a DWI" makes a good headline but it's got getting at any of the real issues.
You do have to figure that in a somewhat erratic population, that there are going to be some frivolous reports of crime -- legitimately borrowed cars reported as stolen. Dropped the charges doesn't necessarily mean "The car was really stolen but I didn't want to testify", it could also mean "Getting the person I have a complicated relationship with who borrowed my car arrested was enough harassment -- going through with the prosecution would be too much."
a mentally ill subject in jail
When they arrested him, he was depressed. That should be something they can handle.
The only reason I can see for mental illness to stop a bail hearing or trial is if he met the standard for civil commitment; something to do with being dangerous. This guy does not sound as if he was dangerous.
It does seem likely there's nothing else the jail could have done differently or better. It's not like they wanted to keep him there at all, much less wanted to keep him in solitary. But they couldn't put him in with the general population, because he was crazy. It would be great if they could have sent him away to a nice comfortable place for crazy people, but they probably didn't have that option. They said they had medical staff checking on him regularly. What should or could they have done differently?
"Nothing the jail could have done differently or better" doesn't get you $21 million in a prisoner case in federal court. Not likely anyway.
This whole deal is just another example of the atrocious nature of reporting. There are publicly available documents that sum up and explain all of this, that aren't hard to read or understand, but (apparently) no one reporting on the issue bothered to take a look.
But they couldn't put him in with the general population, because he was crazy.
He was depressed. I haven't seen much to indicate that he was very crazy before they locked him in a box.
They said they had medical staff checking on him regularly.
I went on Pacer. There's not much briefing in the case, but plaintiff's trial brief says that the medical care was a nurse practitioner writing scripts without seeing him for months at a time.
Putting mentally ill inmates in solitary is only going to break them down further. It might be necessary for someone whose illness expressed itself as uncontrollable violence, but that 's not most mentally ill people.
The standards for competency to stand trial and for commitment don't really have much to do with each other, afaik. Competency is about being able to participate intelligently in your own defense, I think usually driven by how delusional you are. There will be overlap with being too dangerous to be on the streets, but nowhere close to 100%. You can be perfectly lucid, but also enough of a sociopath that you're likely to keep on assaulting people, or a sexual predator with very poor ability to control your violent impulses.
If they've got a leg to stand on in terms of having kept him locked up for two years, and we're just talking about inhumane treatment of a prisoner, this is an awful story but it's nothing unusual.
There's not a whole lot of useful info on the docket (no dispositive motions, which strikes me as odd), but in his pre-trial submission Slevin expressly indicated that he was not challenging the legality of his long confinement, just of his long segregated confinment. (Though it looks like he did so not as a genuine concession, but to moot testimony relating to the county's anticipated "it's the prosecutor/defense lawyer/judge's fault" defense.)
About the only other interesting thing I saw is that the county conceded that Slevin's care was inadequate. Their defense appears to have been (a) that the inadequate care was not the result of deliberate indifference and (b) that the care, though inadequate, was up to the prevailing (low) community standards--i.e., they didn't have the resources and money for better treatment, and even if they did there was no better treatment to be bought. Which sounds to me like (a) pretty clear bullshit and (b) constitutionally irrelevant.
tried to cure her daughter of lesbianism with a bat
Everybody knows that takes a newt.
I think we all know the Speaker has driven more women to lesbianism than away from it.
He's only ten. Don't rush him.
Then why is he running for president?
On my planet, one orbital rotation takes 6.39 of your Earth years.
it really does drive people out of their minds, and should be recognized as torture.
Agreed. And I'd like to think that "recognized as torture" would therefore lead to widespread abhorrence and rejection of the practice, but alas, that's not at all what I believe.
158: This image, for instance, will stand forever as a testament to the ways of the USA in the first decade of the 21st century.
